Trip to Firenze (Florence)

10/11

Our friends Ted and Sandy were in Florence and we arranged to meet them for lunch and a visit to Santa Croce Church. Our plan was to take the train so that parking in a huge, busy city wouldn't be a problem. Easy...the train station was half a mile from the apartment, we had checked out the parking situation there several days before and had bought our tickets the day before. We left in plenty of time to encounter a huge line of "commute" traffic in the tiny town of Altopascio, then turned onto the wrong street for the train station then managed to get to the station where the parking lot was not only full but there were no parking places on the entire street of the station. Time was now running short and anxiety was mounting but we found a single place to park on a residential street a couple blocks away, hurried to the station in time to  wait for the LATE train.
We took a taxi to Ted and Sandy's hotel through crazy traffic and zillions of tourists and the 4 of us walked to Santa Croce through zillions of tourists. T and S were told that Sept and Oct are now the busiest tourist months of the year...more even than the summer.
Santa Croce is where Michaelangelo, Galileo, Rossini and Machiavelli are buried.

Tomb of Michaelangelo

Tomb of Galileo

It's a huge and beautiful Franciscan church with cloisters, a refectory and a large courtyard and a lot of beautiful artwork.

To add to my Della Robbia quest

Courtyard

There was severe damage to the art work and the structure in the 1966 flood of the Arno which required years to repair. 8 days after our visit a tourist was killed when a piece of plaster fell from the ceiling onto his head.
After our Santa Croce visit we went to lunch at Trattoria Buzzino (Ted And Sandy liked the name because it's close to Bozzini.) Lunch was enjoyable and good but unremarkable. After lunch we went to their hotel and went up to the roof garden for a great view of Florence. Then T and S walked us back to the train station for our trip home. We spent a quiet evening at home preparing for our departure in the morning and enjoying a dinner of leftovers.